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Who is Edward Snowden?

Edward Snowden: Traitor or hero?

Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”

“People will see in the media all these disclosures, they’ll know the lengths the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society,” he told The Guardian last month after he’d asked it to identify him as its source. “But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”

One month after The Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the National Security Agency to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed.

There is no modern day Sen. Frank Church ready to convene historic hearings about the intelligence community, like the ones Church ran in the 1970s, proceedings that radically transformed the U.S. intelligence services. Far from having been surprised by Snowden’s disclosures, today’s intelligence committee leaders stepped right up to defend the NSA’s surveillance programs. From Republicans, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, to Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, they’ve been nearly unanimous in their support.

“I feel I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep this country safe,” Feinstein told The New York Times. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

In short, the workings of the NSA and its partner intelligence agencies — which, Snowden said, threaten to become “turn-key tyranny” — continue unabated.

“It’s very concerning,” said Jack Lerner, a law professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in privacy and national security. “I’ve seen surveys that already show some changing attitudes, however I’ve also seen a Pew survey that said there’s still a pretty strong majority in favor of essentially letting the NSA do this.”

Not that Lerner agrees it should — “There’re no checks and balances on the way they’re using it. There’s no guarantee they’re not listening on phone sex calls, or people they know, or public figures, or journalists.” He remembered a former NSA worker alleging the agency had monitored then-Sen. Barack Obama’s communications in the mid-2000s.

But as far as a potential intelligence reform bill, or a public groundswell of opposition to the government’s surveillance apparatus – there’s been nothing of the kind.

Snowden has achieved folk hero status in some quarters and his disclosures have unquestionably caused headaches for the White House, particularly with European allies, tensions that could create future complications. But so far, he has achieved nothing close to the goal of “summoning the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny,” as Snowden’s father put it in an open letter on Tuesday. Members of Congress have not only ignored Snowden’s call to arms but complain that his leaks have set back their ability to do their normal work.

Texas Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a backer of cybersecurity reform, lamented to POLITICO last week that Snowden had slowed what was already sluggish progress on both cyber and defense appropriations bills.

“I do worry that the passion or the headline of the moment could cause us to do something that would be a mistake, and I think that’s part of the reason [House Homeland Security Chairman Mike] McCaul decided to slow down a little bit on his bill. Obviously we’re not doing defense approps this week. We want to not just have a knee-jerk reaction to this event even though it is a big deal,” Thornberry said.